Impossible Things
by actressen
Summary: "Two go in, two must come back. How hard is that to understand?" Jefferson finds a new travel companion in the unlikeliest of places...


**AN: **Welcome to this new story! Should I be starting a new story? Nope. Am I anyway? Yep! So, this was inspired by my re-watching all of _Once Upon a Time _and Sebastian Stan's fabulous performance as Jefferson (oh, how I wish he'd come back!). So, here we go. Let me know what you think!

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**Impossible Things**

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_**Chapter One — Portal Hats and Fairy Dust**_

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_Our World, Early 19th Century_

Lucy Hart was an incredibly unusual young woman. Her family held no titles, but her father, and his father before him, had amassed enough wealth to acquire a respectable manor and a rather large estate to go with it. She was the sixth of nine children, and the fifth daughter. All of her eight siblings were more or less normal, respectable youths. Her elder brother had entered the military and quickly risen through the ranks, and all four of her elder sisters were married. One to the second son of an Earl and another to a Baronet, as her mother loved to remind anyone who would listen. Though Lucy was the eldest unmarried daughter at seventeen, her mother had cut her loses a long time ago and had skipped right over her. After Arabella's engagement was announced, Mrs. Hart turned her attentions to fifteen-year-old Mary instead. Lucy didn't mind, which was probably one of the many reasons her family found her so strange.

But she was harmless, and quiet, so her family usually chose to just look the other way, and everyone else followed suit. Eight good apples was enough to make up for one odd nut.

Lucy could usually be found in one of two places: the library or the sizable forest on their estate. She loved little more than getting lost in her own mind, whether that be in a thought or a daydream or a book. On occasion she wrote stories of her own, though she usually lacked the patience to get them on paper beyond a few fragments. They just stayed in her head, much like everything else. She drew, too, proper botanical illustrations—the one thing a governess had ever taught her that she continued to practice by choice—on the rare occasions when she was patient, and impossible things when she was not.

She didn't understand other people. Why spend so much time in their boring reality? In their universe, with all its rules, and all the other rules their society put on top of that? Maybe it was true that anything _could _happen, but nothing ever did. It was truly tragic. At least in her mind things could change and twist and bend and break and back again. Lucy wanted more, of course, she wanted impossible things. And if her imagination was as close as she could get—well, she would take what she could.

So on a Thursday morning she headed down the well-worn path to the forest, sketchbook under her arm and pencil behind her ear, not knowing that everything was about to change.

* * *

Jefferson wanted to strangle someone.

Unfortunately, the object of his anger was already dead—which, as a matter of fact, was the reason he was so angry in the first place. Traveling to this land and back was hard enough as it was, with only the barest traces of the finickiest magic Jefferson had ever come across. It took weeks of planning and considerable skill to pull off, even when one's partner didn't get himself killed.

"Two go in, two must come back. How _hard _is that to understand?" Jefferson complained to himself. This was hardly the first time this had happened to him, but the four other times they were in lands far more magical and, therefore, both more familiar and more suitable for portal-jumping. Jefferson prided himself in his ability to worm his way out of a tight spot, but even he had his doubts about this one.

Jefferson growled and kicked a tree. It didn't make him feel any better, and the toes of his left foot certainly felt worse. He sat down on one of the tree's fallen neighbors and sighed. If the Enchanted Forest was an ocean, the forest he had managed to get lost in was a puddle. Oh, the irony. Jefferson had to applaud Fate's sense of humor, even when he was on the losing end of it.

A branch snapped somewhere behind him, and Jefferson jumped to his feet, on high alert. He turned to face the newcomer, whether it be a clumsy wood animal or a possible threat.

At first glance, it appeared to be neither—though there was something rather owlish about her large, round grey eyes—but Jefferson wasn't about to let his guard down. He had known a few too many pixies and mermaids in his day to be comforted by a pretty face.

"Oh, hello," the newcomer said. From her inflection, Jefferson couldn't tell if she was surprised or amused. Both, maybe? Neither?

Jefferson shook his head to clear it, breaking his train of thought. It didn't matter, anyway.

He took a moment to study the newcomer.

She wore a pale blue walking dress, embroidered with daisies, sleeves and collar trimmed with cream eyelet lace that matched her bonnet, which was sloppily pinned, allowing loose curls of honey blonde hair to escape. A pencil peeked out from behind her ear. From the dress's quality, Jefferson could tell she came from money. From everything else, he could tell… well, he wasn't exactly sure, but he knew he wasn't dealing with a typical merchant's daughter.

"Hello," Jefferson responded, testing the waters. "Could you tell me where I am, perchance?"

The young woman blinked, but otherwise showed no signs of surprise at his question. "Marchwood forest, about three leagues south of Marchwood Estate," she answered.

Well, that meant nothing to him.

"Thank you," Jefferson said anyway, as a crazy idea started to take a shadow of a semblance of shape in his head. "The name's Jefferson."

She cocked her head just barely to the left. Jefferson stood by his earlier observation—there was definitely something owl-like about this woman.

"Lucy Hart," she replied. "Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Jefferson."

Jefferson smiled. "It's just Jefferson."

"All right," Lucy said without hesitation.

Jefferson smiled widely. His idea had taken proper shape in his head, and it was just crazy enough to work.

"How would you like to go on an adventure?"

* * *

For the briefest of moments, when Lucy first stumbled across the stranger, she thought, for the very first time in her life, that she might actually be crazy. From his richly colored patchwork clothes and intricately knotted cravat to the bizarre hat he wore on his head, the stranger was unlike anything she had ever seen before, or even imagined. But she blinked and he was still there, so Lucy decided to put aside her doubts. What was reality, anyway?

So introductions were made, and with every second that passed Lucy became more aware of a feeling, a feeling that this moment was _important_, that it was a beginning—and an end, as beginnings so often were.

Then Jefferson asked her a question she had rarely ever dared to dream of hearing, and Lucy wanted to do nothing more than to enthusiastically agree. But she forced herself to take more care than that (she actually did have good sense, contrary to popular belief, she just chose to ignore it most of the time).

"And what, exactly, would that entail?" Lucy asked.

"Magic, travel between realms, probably a good bit of running for our lives," said Jefferson.

"Why should I trust you?"

"You shouldn't," he answered easily. It was the truth, and though he had known her for all of not-quite-ten minutes, Jefferson got the feeling that Lucy was not exactly the type to be so easily discouraged.

And he was right.

Lucy knew very well that she shouldn't trust this oddly-dressed stranger. Just like she knew that she shouldn't wander so far into the woods on her own, or that she shouldn't be in the presence of a man, even—_particularly_—such a bizarre one, without a chaperone. But she _did _wander deep into the woods on her own, regularly; she _was _in the presence of this bizarre man without a chaperone; and she _did _trust him, though she shouldn't.

"All right," Lucy agreed, finally giving in to the smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.

"All right?" Jefferson repeated, not quite sure what that entailed.

"I'll go with you," she clarified.

"There's no going back. I can't promise that you'll ever see your family again, or that you'll be safe," Jefferson warned.

"All right," she repeated, without hesitation.

"Really?" Jefferson had to be sure—he hadn't expected her to agree so quickly, so seemingly unconcerned. He needed to know she understood, because there was nothing worse than a whiny partner in crime.

Except for a dead one, perhaps.

Lucy recognized his concern and decided to elaborate:

"I understand that there is no going back—that I will never see my family again, my home. But in every second that passes I become more certain that this is for the best for myself, and for them. They love me, yes, and I them, but they do not understand me, nor I them. If I go, they may look quietly for a little while, even worry some, but they will tell the neighbors that they sent me off to Bedlam or some such place, and they will believe it, and there will be no scandal. My family will stop looking, and their worry will wither, I'd rather, to relief.

"I shall miss them, of course, but I suspect that shall turn to relief in time as well. And, most importantly, this is what I want. All I've ever wanted was one impossible thing—how foolish would I be to let this chance pass by?

"I'm taking the risk of believing you. All I ask you to do is believe me in return."

Jefferson nodded. He could do that.

Lucy's smile widened.

"What must I do?" she asked.

"Come closer," Jefferson instructed, "and listen carefully."

If there was one thing Lucy had been told in her life, it was to keep her distance from strange men—especially of the young, handsome (she supposed), unmarried variety (an assumption on her part, but she didn't see a ring). So if she hesitated for a moment, well, it was understandable. But the important thing was that the moment passed, and she approached him regardless.

In fact, once she approached him, she reached out, just until the tips of her gloved fingers (she had come to appreciate the merits of gloves after a few too many encounters with poisonous leaves) made contact with the textured velvet of his jacket, just to be certain.

"What are you doing?" Jefferson asked. Lucy pulled away as if she had touched a hot stove.

"Just making sure you're… real," she explained, unable to keep a blush off her cheeks.

Jefferson didn't say anything, but something in his expression told Lucy that, at some level, he understood. And in that moment, Lucy knew with absolute certainty that she was making the right decision, because he _understood_. She had never felt understood before. She thought she could live without it, and she probably could, but now that she had the faintest taste of what it might be like to actually live _with _it, well, she certainly had no desire to go back.

"Are you ready?" Jefferson asked.

"Yes," Lucy answered. She had never been more certain of anything in her life.

"Then let's go," he said, taking off his top hat and placing it carefully before them on the ground. He retrieved a small vial out of some hidden pocket and pulled out the cork with his teeth, spitting it out onto the ground without a care where it landed. He upended the vial, pouring the contents—glittering gold dust unlike anything Lucy had ever seen before—into his hat, tapping the top and sides to make certain none remained. Then he tossed the empty vial over his shoulder, too, not caring where it went.

Jefferson kneeled on the ground before his hat, glancing up at her now and then with a giddy smile on his face. Lucy was reminded of the illusionist she had seen in London with her cousins when she was a girl.

He adjusted the hat once, twice, and then sent it spinning like a top.

But instead of slowing down, it started to spin faster and faster, until it was nothing but a blur. Purple smoke billowed over the top at an alarming rate, swirling into a vortex. Lucy gasped, but the sound was swallowed by the roaring wind. She turned to Jefferson and discovered that his lips were moving, shaping words she couldn't hear.

"WHAT?!" Lucy shouted, hoping to be heard over the roar.

Jefferson rolled his eyes, then reached over and grabbed her by the hand, pulling her even closer.

"We jump on three!" Jefferson shouted, inches from her ear, still holding onto her hand. He gestured to the vortex with his other hand, just to be certain she understood. Lucy nodded.

She really shouldn't be doing this.

"ONE!"

This was impossible.

"TWO!"

She didn't care.

"THREE!"

They jumped.


End file.
